Anyone use solid state flash drive on Classic Amiga?

[Xanxi]

I have two of them, a 3,5' IDE 128MB drive and a 2,5' IDE 4GB drive, and they work badly for me.
Would like to share some experience.

Thanks.

[KThunder]

i was thinking of getting one for my laptop, what works badly for you?

[Xanxi]

The 4GB laptop flash disk is well recognized and partitionned in my 3.1 A600 but i can't manage to copy fully my hardrive backup on its boot partition, always fail during the process. Then i get checksum error and so on.

Works fine on my PC laptop with ide-usb adapter though.

These don't seem reliable for the amiga unfortunately, unless i am doing something wrong.


The 128 MB 3,5' drive works better as boot drive for my A1200 but conflict with my CD-ROM.

[maffoo]

Xanxi wrote:

The 128 MB 3,5' drive works better as boot drive for my A1200 but conflict with my CD-ROM.

Is the CDROM connected to the A1200's IDE interface? If so, have you checked that one is master and one is slave?

(Sorry if this sounds like a dumb question, it's the first thing that springs to mind when there are conflicts between IDE devices!)

Just out of interest, are these drives essentially the same as a Compact Flash card connected to an adapter? Or are they a different sort of flash memory? If they are just Compact Flash, they should work (I have a CF card acting as a hard drive in my A1200.)

[CLS2086]

These solutions are quite problematics on Amiga due to their medium type is "7".
I also have no luck with a CF+IDE and a CDROM on my A1200 (with IDEFIX Express),  and no more on my A600. It only works on my 1200 as Master with my hdd in master mode too !!!
On my A600 it only works when it's alone, but it doesn't support some programms nor to be partitionned...

Maybe something must be changed in MaxTransfer or Mask ?

[Thomas]

Xanxi wrote:
The 4GB laptop flash disk is well recognized and partitionned in my 3.1 A600 but i can't manage to copy fully my hardrive backup on its boot partition, always fail during the process. Then i get checksum error and so on.

Works fine on my PC laptop with ide-usb adapter though.

These don't seem reliable for the amiga unfortunately, unless i am doing something wrong.

Reduce MaxTransfer to 64k or less (0x10000 or 0xfe00).

Bye,
Thomas

[cpfuture]

I have some info regarding the A500. I'm currently using a Kingston 1GB Compact Flash card with an Alfa Data Alfapower 500 IDE Controller, by employing a CF to IDE adapter. Can't really comment on anything long term, because I've only been using this setup for 3 days, but until now it works great! Enjoying a totally silent A500. Will be adding another GB soon as these cards are dirt cheap (28 euros)

My experience is that different IDE controllers prefer different CF cards. I also have an Apollo AT500 IDE controller and that one was pretty picky. It only talked to a 512MB Sandisk CF card. The 1GB Kingston and a 256MB Danelec were not recognized by the Apollo.

[alexatkin]

Is there a particular reason to prefer FLASH over a 2.5" HD other than noise level?

My understand is that CompactFlash cards will NEVER be as good as a real hard drive because they arent designed for the kind of random access that hard drives are.  Im therefore puzzled why people bother considering many 2.5" drives are almost silent.  

The birds outside are more noisy than my A1200 with 2.5" HD.

Does anyone REALLY live somewhere quiet enough for it to matter?  PCs are too noisy even the quietest ones are, the Amiga really isnt.

[cpfuture]

CF cards have come a long way, nowadays allowing for *many* write operations. The low energy consumption, no mechanical parts and total silence is what makes them ideal for me personally. Oh and they're dirt cheap.  :lol:

[mr_a500]

Is there a particular reason to prefer FLASH over a 2.5" HD other than noise level?

Yes. Modern 2.5" harddrives are total crap and usually wear out and fail after about a year (in my experience with many drives failing at work and home). They are also very hot - by far the hottest thing in my A500. I also hate the 10-second inactivity spindown which can't be disabled.

I'll be switching to CF as soon as I can find a CF to IDE adapter - which seem to be impossible to find in Canada.

[cpfuture]

Hey, mr_a500. Wicked A500 setup you got, BTW. Regarding CF-IDE adapters. Try eBay. I got one from Hong Kong for 5 euros. That's including shipping. Finding the right CF card can be a hit and miss affair depending on your controller. Good luck!

[mr_a500]

Hey, mr_a500. Wicked A500 setup you got, BTW.

Thanks. It looks like you've got a pretty nice A500 yourself. Is it just for games or do you do other stuff? I use mine for everything.

Regarding CF-IDE adapters. Try eBay. I got one from Hong Kong for 5 euros. That's including shipping. Finding the right CF card can be a hit and miss affair depending on your controller. Good luck!

I really want the CF to IDE adapter that has 2 slots. I wanted to put in two 4Gb CF cards - one for main usage, one for backup. That would solve all the annoying problems I've been having backing up my stuff.

[cpfuture]

mr_a500 wrote:

Thanks. It looks like you've got a pretty nice A500 yourself. Is it just for games or do you do other stuff? I use mine for everything.

I'm still in the process of actually making a comfortable working environment on my A500, after coming back to it for the first time since 1995 (not my original A500 ofcourse). First thing I did was to get it online by hooking the null modem cable up to my iMac using ppp (AmiTCP/AmiPPP). Very handy if you want to browse or download Aminet stuff straight to the A500. Currently I'm looking into making several boot partitions on my CF card for each Kickstart (1.3, 2.0 and 3.1), each having its corresponding Workbench installed. I know most people hate 1.3, but it's the one I grew up with and somehow it has its charm. Ofcourse it can't hurt to have 1.3 for some of those old games.

Recently I also managed to score an original copy of Steinberg Pro 24 for the Amiga, including dongle. Although I do have Cubase on my Mac and PC, I'm betting the thrill of actually making music with my A500 will get my creative juices running. Ofcourse I'll be installing all the old stuff I used to play around with too, like ProTracker, DPaint, AMOS. I have amassed a ton of UK Amiga mags and cover disks which I plan to sort out one day and ofcourse play games.

I really want the CF to IDE adapter that has 2 slots. I wanted to put in two 4Gb CF cards - one for main usage, one for backup. That would solve all the annoying problems I've been having backing up my stuff.

You mean like this one?

Link

I bought that one as well, when I was still figuring out why my first CF card didn't work with my controller (process of elimination, try a different adapter  :-D  )

[maffoo]

@mr_a500:
If it's any help, I got mine from an Ebay user called mobilesupply.  Seemed to be reliable.

[mr_a500]

Thanks for the link maffoo, but I don't like eBay or PayPal (or Canada Customs). I was hoping to find it somewhere in Canada.

You mean like this one?

Link

That looks like a 3.5" IDE connector (and I need 2.5"). I saw one like that but with 2.5" connector.

Currently I'm looking into making several boot partitions on my CF card for each Kickstart (1.3, 2.0 and 3.1), each having its corresponding Workbench installed. I know most people hate 1.3, but it's the one I grew up with and somehow it has its charm. Of course it can't hurt to have 1.3 for some of those old games.

I tried that too, but couldn't get 1.3 to recognize my HD. I also like 1.3 because of its "charm", so I use WHDload kick13.slave and have a bunch of "virtual floppies" set up - each with its own system-configuration prefs. The virtual floppy (actually just a folder on HD that the kick13.slave reads) can be any size - but best if less than max RAM so you don't get WHDload screen flashes. For example, on one virtual floppy I have PhotonPaint, AmigaBasic, Sculpt, and the (WB friendly) game Nebula - all programs that have problems in WB 3.1, but work fine in 1.3. So I get the original 1.3 floppy "feel" (each with its own colour scheme) but much faster and much more space than floppy and I can quickly quit back to the more useful WB 3.1 without having to reboot.

You don't need 1.3 for old games if you've got WHDload. Besides, most of those old games are not HD installable or have problems with newer processors. After running games from fast HD, it's a very painful experience to go back to slow floppy loading.